


Undercovers

by SuburbanSun



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy Era, Canon Compliant, Engineering vs. Biochem, F/M, Hotels, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-1x20, Pre-Canon, Sharing a Bed, Talking, Team Engineering, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-07-11 12:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7051042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/pseuds/SuburbanSun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SHIELD protocol prohibits agents from sharing a bed with their fellow agents-- but when have they ever let protocol stop them before?</p><p>A series of conversations Jemma and Fitz have had in hotel beds spanning years and continents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brussels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LilacFeather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacFeather/gifts).



> Inspired initially by [this post on Tumblr](http://unbreakablejemmasimmons.tumblr.com/post/144780841882/jsimmonss-from-science-babies-to-science-hotties).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [bigfunnywords](http://bigfunnywords.tumblr.com/)/raptorlindsay for the chapter 1 beta!

>   **BRUSSELS**

 

“Move over; you’re hogging the blankets.”

Jemma huffed, and tugged the comforter tighter around her shoulders. “You move over.” She wasn’t about have a chilly night’s sleep just because of a series of unfortunate circumstances at the hotel check-in desk. “This is your fault, anyway.”

He scoffed. “I can’t help it that the cab driver got lost.”

“Lost! Only because of your poor directions.” She rolled her eyes, even though she knew he likely wouldn’t get the full effect in the darkness of the room.

“I also can’t help it that I don’t speak any Dutch, and my French is rusty at best. How many languages do _you_ speak?” he asked, scowling. “Besides, I offered to sleep on the floor.”

“Well, it’s not as if I could let you do that, could I? You get so cranky in the mornings whenever you fall asleep at your desk. I imagine a night spent shivering on hotel room carpet would result in more moaning than I’m willing to put up with.”

He grunted, but didn’t say anything else, so Jemma shut her eyes and tried to let sleep come. She wanted to be bright-eyed and alert for the start of the conference in the morning, and they’d gotten to the hotel so late as it was. She breathed deep and even, in and out, for what felt like several minutes, and just as she seemed to be on the precipice of dropping off, Fitz spoke.

“D’you think anybody’ll ask us questions?” His voice sounded low and gravelly, and was muffled a bit by the pillow he’d stuffed under his cheek. Jemma rolled all the way onto her side to face him more fully, frowning at him.

“What?”

His eyes were still closed, she noticed, and a little crease had formed between his brows. “Tomorrow.” He exhaled long and slow through his nose. “We’ve got a whole slide that just says ‘Q&A.’ What if nobody asks us any questions?”

That was what was keeping him up? “Of course they’ll have questions, Fitz. Our research is practically incomprehensible to the layperson.”

Finally, he opened his eyes to meet hers, and she could tell how blue they were even in the darkness. Or maybe she just remembered.

“But this is a SHIELD conference, and nobody in SHIELD has ever been referred to as a layperson in their entire ruddy lives.”

Jemma stretched her legs, pointing her toes toward the foot of the bed. She could tell by the topography of the bedcovers that Fitz lay curled up on his side, and if she bent her knees, she thought they’d certainly brush against his, which didn’t seem to be proper protocol for overnight stays with your SHIELD Academy lab partner. That said, sharing a bed with your aforementioned lab partner likely wasn’t proper protocol, either.

She yawned as she formulated a response. “I’m sure they’ll have plenty of questions for us. Why are you so concerned, anyway? I know you’ve presented at conferences before. I found your cardboard box.”

(It had been quite an adorable find, a ratty old box filled to the brim with conference programs, school bulletins, newspaper writeups. He’d turned bright pink from the neck up, and muttered something about how it didn’t matter, how his mum must have tucked it in his suitcase the last time he’d visited Glasgow. The way he’d taken it from her with careful hands and placed it gracefully in the middle of the high closet shelf told Jemma that it _did_ actually matter, just a little.)

He looked at her plaintively. “But not _SHIELD_ conferences.”

It was true, Jemma thought. The events of the following morning did feel like a different animal entirely from the expositions and conventions she’d taken part in before. It was their debut within the global SHIELD community, for one thing. Academy cadets were rarely chosen to speak at these types of conferences, for another, so it felt as if all eyes would be on them in the morning.

And besides that, it was their first time presenting together as a team. No matter how many times they’d run through the presentation in her dorm room, taking cues from each other and passing the clicker back and forth, it would be different on a stage, in Belgium, in front of several hundred colleagues from around the world.

Things would likely be different from there on out.

“There’s no sense in worrying about it now, is there?” she said, slipping her hand underneath her pillow as she watched him. “We can’t do anything about it.”

He nodded.

“And anyway,” she continued. “I wouldn’t be concerned about it at all if I were you. I’m not. Besides, Professor Weaver would never have recommended us for this conference if she didn’t think our proposed topic was a good one. I bet our session will be standing room only.”

The corners of his mouth quirked upward in a small smile, and she felt pleased that she’d managed to assuage some of his worry. “You think?”

She nodded. “I know.”

Fitz let his eyes slip shut, nodding slowly and fluffing his pillow beneath his head. He didn’t say anything else, and Jemma half-wondered if he’d fallen asleep. She couldn’t help but watch him for a few more moments-- her brilliant lab partner who had crept into her life and filled it so completely, who somehow managed to be simultaneously supremely sensitive and the cockiest person she’d ever met. It was such a funny thing, the way she felt like she’d known him her whole life when it had really only been a few months.

His breathing seemed to even out, and then his eyes flicked open again, seeking hers.

“But what if--”

Jemma pulled her hand out from under her pillow and reached for his as it gestured wildly in the air between them. She grasped it quickly, threading their fingers together, and he clammed up.

“Fitz,” she said, and he blinked at her with trusting eyes.

She didn’t say anything else at all. Within minutes, they both fell finally, blessedly asleep.

When Jemma woke up bright and early the next morning, if less alert than she’d hoped, the crook of her index finger was still linked with his on the mattress between them.


	2. Los Angeles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes places post-1x20 Nothing Personal (the one with the motel/"I'm not Hydra").

 

> **LOS ANGELES**

 

“Tired?” Jemma asked, shifting onto her side beneath the dingy motel comforter. She watched Fitz where he stood at the window, noting the tense silhouette of his shoulders, the way his arms were crossed tightly over his chest as he looked out into the darkness of the night.

“No,” he said, his voice listless and lying.

Jemma sighed. “Get in bed, please. It’s so late.”

He turned, scowling down at the floor, but did as he was told. He crossed the room and crawled into bed next to her, lifting the covers just enough to slide beneath, keeping a respectable distance between them. He stared up at the ceiling, one hand tucked behind his head under his pillow, and drummed his fingers anxiously over his breastbone.

For a long moment, they were both silent.

“Remember Thanksgiving?” Fitz said after awhile, and Jemma chuckled. She knew immediately which Thanksgiving he was referring to.

“Yes,” she said, the corners of her lips tilting up in a smile. “You were insufferable.”

“Hey,” he said, twisting in bed so his upper body faced her. “You try eating that much turkey and potatoes and not falling asleep at two in the afternoon.”

She rolled her eyes. “I ate a perfectly normal portion of said turkey and potatoes, and was able to stay awake until a perfectly normal hour. At which time--”

“--at which time, I woke up from my turkey coma--”

“--and proceeded to terrorize me well into the morning, yes.” She laughed, shifting so that she clutched the pillow under her head, the fabric cool against her cheek. “Made me regret giving into your requests for a true American Thanksgiving.”

“You know I appreciated it.”

Her answering smile was warm. “I know.”

He yawned, and she thought she noticed his blinking becoming slower as he grew sleepier. It was, after all, approaching three in the morning. “Besides,” he said thickly. “Kept you entertained.”

It was true, though she wouldn’t admit it. When he’d woken up just before midnight on Thanksgiving evening, he’d been filled with energy-- much more than he had on any given morning, for some ungodly reason. That alone had been enjoyable to witness as he puttered around their shared apartment, searching for a gadget to repair or a project to keep him busy. In the end, he’d sketched out designs for a helicopter with metal pincers that emerged from its belly like one of the modified crane games tucked in the back corner of the Boiler Room. (Fitz liked those best. Nearly every time they’d spent an evening there, nursing ill-begotten beers, he’d won her a prize. She’d kept them all, lined them up neatly on the top shelf of her closet. Her favorites had even been stowed in her luggage and brought onto the Bus. She hoped she’d see them again.) Jemma had watched, eyes bleary but still bright, too captivated by his ideas and their conversation to go to bed.

“No, you didn’t,” she lied.

He smirked faintly. “‘s not Thanksgiving now.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Fitz sighed, his breath muffled by the pillow. She wondered if it scratched at his cheek the same way her pillow scratched at hers, and idly wished they could have afforded a nicer motel. “We should get some sleep. Bound to be loads to do tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Yeah.”

But he didn’t close his eyes. She must have been giving him a questioning look, because he answered without her having to ask.

“If I go to sleep, that means it’s all really happening.” He grimaced. “I wake up, and it’s all really happening.”

She furrowed her brow, and tried to use her kindest tone. “But Fitz, it _is_ all really happening.”

Then he did close his eyes.  

When he opened them again, she noticed how blue they looked, even in the darkened hotel room. The only light filtered through the gauzy curtains from the streetlamps, but she could make out the planes of his face, the crease between his eyebrows. She felt a sudden and intense gratefulness to Coulson for letting the two of them share a room, rather than suggesting she bunk with Skye and Fitz with Trip.

“You don’t really think I could ever be Hydra, do you?” Jemma asked after a moment, her voice a whisper. It had been tugging at the back of her mind all evening.

Fitz frowned. “Didn’t think Ward could be, either.”

“How long have you and I known each other?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I know.” Fitz pressed his lips together, exhaling through his nose, long and slow. “It’s not really that I thought you could, you know.”

“Then what?”

“It would just-- it would be so much worse if you were.”

“It would?”

He bit his lip. “I followed you here. What would that make me?”

Jemma didn’t say anything for a long time.

“Well. As I said,” she began, clearing her throat when her voice sounded too thick with emotion. “You’ll never have to find out.”

“Yeah.”

She rolled over onto her back, and after a few seconds, he did the same, his arms falling to his sides. Silence hung in the air again, and Jemma tried closing her eyes, but in the end, restlessness won out.

“Want to watch something?” she asked, tilting her head in his direction. He nodded, and she picked up the remote control from her nightstand and flipped the television on. Their choices were minimal, and they settled on late night infomercials, but it was a sufficient distraction. Within half an hour, Fitz was snoring gently, his chest rising and falling in slow, even intervals.

Sleep eluded Jemma, but the drone of the TV and the pattern of Fitz’s breathing lulled her into a relaxed state. As the clock ticked toward 4 a.m., she found her head lolling to the side on her pillow, angling toward Fitz. She finally turned over onto her side, and without thinking, her hands wrapped loosely around his where it lay beside him.

It was only then that she was able to drift off into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

When she woke up, it was all really happening. But they were rested. They were together.

**Author's Note:**

> Want to hang out on tumblr? I'm unbreakablejemmasimmons over there.


End file.
